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Today was a long drive for us, we normally don't drive much more than 2-3 hours in a day but our drive from Yeppoon to Mackay was over four hours. it should have been just under 4 hours but we had a bit of an exciting day today. First of all we drove past the first petrol stop we came to because we still had just over half a tank of fuel not knowing that the next one was over a hundred kilometres away and by the time we arrived at the fuel stop we probably only had a breath of fuel in the tank. We were very thankful to fill up and then we were back on the road heading towards Mackay and our caravan park we were looking for at Alligator Creek. We had just passed Sarina on the outskirts of Mackay when the traffic came to a stop. A truck had rolled ahead of us, there were police and ambulances everywhere and the traffic was backed up for at least a kilometre ahead and behind us. We were directed by the police to turn around so we did this and drove back to Sarina where we planned to have lunch hoping the traffic may have cleared. We called into the bakery in Sarina and when we told the lady who served us what had happened she told us how to get around the incident to get on our way. We had our lunch and then back in the car following the directions we had been given, luckily the GPS agreed and we soon found ourselves around the incident and at Moana Caravan Park. When we first drove in it looked a bit shabby but I went in and paid for our booking and we were told just to find anywhere and set up, which we did. The park is much better than we expected because the nightly rate is very cheap we booked three nights but might extend this depending on what we have to do. We are set up and I have contacted our friend we have up here to make a time to catch up, we will wait to hear from her. I have done a wash that we weren't able to do at the last stop and I want to wash our bedding tomorrow before we go out. This might be a good chance to catch up on a bit our housekeeping we need to do before moving on. We will visit the Information Centre tomorrow to see what there is to do to plan the remainder of our time here.
Our last park we had stayed at hadn't allowed us to do any laundry in our vans because of the grey water overload and I had really wanted to wash our bedding and our dirty clothes were starting to mount up so I started today with a bit of housework. I made our coffee first and had this on the go. It only took me an hour to get everything I wanted to get done finished apart from the last wash I had on. We drove into Mackay to the Information Centre to see what there was to do while we were here, the lady who served us was very helpful and spent quite a bit of time talking to us. There was a water park beside the Information Centre so we went in here to take a look, there are three pools here for different aged children and entry is free, we were very impressed. We took all our information and returned to the car where we hopped in and drove back around to the pioneer river lookout just down the road. It was starting to rain and we had left our vents on the van up and our bedding outside drying so we thought we should drive back there and close the vents and take in our washing before doing anything else. While home I put out the next lot of washing and we had lunch. We wanted to do the Sugar Shed tour and there was one at 2.00pm and we left home in plenty of time to make this tour, however, when we arrived we found that the tour was full so we booked in for tomorrow morning at 9.30am. We had a walk around the historic buildings while we were there and bought a couple of chili sauces from the craft shop. We left here and drove to Sarina beach to have a bit of a look around, I took a few photos while here, it is a pretty beach. We drove from here in search of the Hay Point Coal Terminal Lookout, we found the road we needed to take and parked and walked around to the lookout. This was a little gem to us in that we were amazed with the whole set up of the terminal, it is quite extensive and covers a huge area of both land and sea, we read about the process of bringing the coal in and then allocating it to go to it's final destination. While we were there the helicopter returned with it's passenger and dropped them just below the lookout. It was getting quite late by this time and it was our grandson Ollie's birthday and we wanted to call him and wish him Happy Birthday before it got much later. Erin knew we were going to call so picked up straight away and we did our normal treat of singing Happy Birthday which all the family sadly have to put up with. Ollie filled us in on his birthday presents and asked whether we had send his money and thanked us and then filled us in on the details of his birthday party. We had a bit of a chat to Erin and then hung up. I cooked a green curry with rice for dinner which we both enjoyed.
We had booked in for the 9.30am tour of the Sarina Sugar Shed so we were up in good time and I made a coffee for our trip. We drove down to Sarina and checked into the office. We didn't have long to wait before our tour guide came to collect us and we were led around the display. The outside display had been set up with the old and current equipment used to harvest the sugar cane and our guide knew the subject well so we felt like we picked up lots of information on the current process. We were then led into a shed and shown the process once the cane was received for processing to extract the juice from the cane and up to the final process of producing the sugar. We were interested to hear that every part of the sugar cane was used in one way or another.
From here we walked over to the tasting shed where we tasted products made here including the sauces, two of which we had already purchased, and the couple of rum liqueurs they made. We liked the two sauces we had already purchased and there was a strawberry liqueur we both liked but we are not rum lovers so we weren't that impressed with the other drinks. We did enjoy the tour though and we did learn a lot about the production of sugar. From here we drove to the supermarket to pick up the few items we wanted before driving around to our next appointment.
We had arranged to catch up with a friend we had originally known from Tarwin Lower who had moved up here 21 years ago, the last time we saw Karen was at her sons wedding a couple of years ago. Karen chose the Hogs Breath cafe in Mackay for our catch up and her Mum Irene and grandson Noah also came along for lunch. It was a great catch up there was so much to talk about that had happened in that time, we sat around for a couple of hours before we all had to move on. Robb and I drove back to the van from here, we have decided to move on to Airlie Beach tomorrow.
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